Comprehensive Sexual Assault Perpetration Prevention: An Integrated Situational and Social-Ecological Conceptual Model

Abstract

Sexual violence is one of the few public health problems that can also be classified as a crime. Thus, it follows that approaches to prevention should be based in both public health principles as well as effective methods of crime reduction. Public health prevention typically focuses on interventions at levels of the Social-Ecological Model (SEM). The SEM is comprised of concentric circles that represent the individual, relational, community, and policy/environmental levels. Public health prevention goals include developing, implementing, and testing interventions at all levels of this model. For example, public health interventions for sexual violence prevention include approaches such as women’s self-defense training (individual-level) and bystander intervention training (relational). Although some interventions show statistically significant effects in changing knowledge and attitudes about sexual violence, very few show changes in preventing perpetration behavior. Criminologists have developed a crime prevention model, Situational Crime Prevention (SCP), which consists of five broad strategies that are further divided into twenty-five specific tactics. The goals of situational prevention are to deter crime by increasing the effort to perpetrate, increasing risks, reducing rewards, reducing provocations, and removing excuses. SCP has been utilized successfully, but the focus has primarily been prevention of property crimes. Very little attention has been paid to the potential utility of SCP for interpersonal violence, particularly for sexual violence. This dissertation proposes a new conceptual model for comprehensive sexual violence perpetration prevention that synthesizes the situational crime prevention matrix and the social-ecological model.